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The NY Times has some cool graphics accompanying article about airline boarding systems. It's possibly the second worst part of the flight, jockeying for overhead compartments and waiting for people to be seated so you can find your seats.
In hopes of trying to shorten the boarding, which can add up to financial savings, different airlines use different tactics to deal with boarding, including back to front, rotating zone, outside-in, and the reverse pyramid ("rear window and middle first, front window and middle next, followed by rear aisle, then front aisle"). The outside-in and reverse pyramid have shorter boarding times than others, but one flaw we see is that people who are seated together will have to board one by one - an impossibility for families.
Anyway, there are some other obstacles to these computer modeled scenarios:
The variable that keeps upsetting the airline industry’s careful planning is the unpredictability of human behavior. The industry calls it “interference,” and it means time-killing activities like elderly passengers perching on armrests to stuff a bag into the overhead bin.Those elderly time killers! Which is why some people say that stricter carry-on procedures, as evinced by this past August's TSA crackdown, are more effective at reducing the time it takes to load a plane.
Have you noticed any new airline boarding procedures? We have never understood airlines that board front to back. But the worst part of the flight is when the pilot switches off the seatbelts-required sign when the plane is at the gate - those moments of everyone jumping up at once and readying to step on each other to get off can be frightening.
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Get a seat in the front. You'll always be the last to get on, but always the first to get off.
In the end that’s what truly matters.
Southwest Airlines manages to board people much more quickly than the coventional airlines by the simple expedient of having no assigned seating at all. You board in groups of 40 and take any open seats that are available. It sounds chaotic but at least in my experience works very well.
i guess peter didn't read the article
"The outside-in and reverse pyramid have shorter boarding times than others, but one flaw we see is that people who are seated together will have to board one by one - an impossibility for families."
Impossibility? Not really. The seating systems deal with when one is first allowed to board, not last allowed. If one's companion (family) is in a later boarding group, then that person can wait until their companion's group is allowed to board.
as long as people insist on carry-ons (the majority of which are larger than the permitted size), no system is going to be that great. just wait at the carousel - what's the rush? better than waiting for everyone to get their carry-ons from the overhead compartment that's not even near their seats because by the time they got there, everyone else had used up all the space... i hate having to wait extra long for people who don't check luggage because i followed the "rules".
My biggest issue with airplane boarding is the way the gate attendants do nothing. They call, for instance, zone 3 or rows 25 and higher. Yet, they don't stop people with tickets for row 22 or row 12 or zone 4 when it's not their turn to board. Many problems could be solved if the flight attendants simply told passengers that it is not yet their turn to board the flight.
Peter's an idiot.
Here's what I don't get:
Planes have multiple doors. Why not build new jetways that let them load the plane from two or more places?
I mean, would you load a subway car by opening one set of doors? Put one door on a bus? Never.
I'm thinking that the money saved by quick turnaround would probably be more than offset by the cost of completely redesigning every airport gate to accomodate loading at more than one door. Maybe I'm crazy; what do I know.
BenK: not all airlines are lax about turning away people whose rows haven't been called yet. I've witnessed exactly this turnaway many, many times.
Certain airports/airlines (mostly in Europe in my experience) do use multiple doors to board, especially on massive planes like 777s. But that mostly turns out to be First class in one door, and the rest of us poor bastards in the other.
damian,
sidewalks are free, extra jetways are not.
if you read the article you'd know that after experimenting with multiple jetway boarding, no significant improvement was observed.
What's the rush? Clearly you've never had to travel for anything but leisure, or have never ever had your flight arrive late and need to get a connecting train or bus. Not all of those things run every hour on the hour and the 20 minutes or more you could wait for luggage could mean the difference between getting where you want to go tomorrow rather than today.
The problem isn't carryons, the problem is morons who cannot figure out how to board a plane and find their seat. YOU HAVE A TICKET! IT HAS A NUMBER ON IT! 12 COMES BEFORE 13! 20 IS WAY AFTER 10! AUGH!
Yes, I travel a lot. And the airlines might want to run videos in the boarding area showing people how to find their seats and stow their bags QUICKLY.
I plop my purse on my seat and then step into the row and get the bag into the overhead, or under the seat. Done. If I need more than that I wait until there's an opening. People's inability to realize what's going on around them is the essential problem. Hell, it's society's essential problem.
If airline used some modicum of consistency they'd solve this problem. If they turn away people who aren't supposed to be boarding CONSISTENTLY then people would stop trying to hustle the loading area. As it stands people crowd the loading area and wait to see if this is a case of people getting turned away or not. If not then make a run for it. Then it becomes a clusterf**k
crybaby: your snarky comment aside, the article makes only passing reference to one airline's experimenting with one type of multiple jetway setup. Hardly a thorough exploration. If you're in the back of an airplane waiting for every single person ahead of you to unload their bags, how could an extra exit at the rear NOT speed your deplaning, and that of the entire back part of the plane? As for the cost effectiveness of better jetways, amortize the cost over a year or two, factoring in the extra flight/day you can squeeze in, and you might see enough profit to justify the expense. You might also build some brand loyalty. Given two flight choices, wouldn't you choose the one you could get onto or off of more quickly?
In Europe they use the second stair in the back all the time and it is great. I have been stuck at the back of a plane filled with Romans on holiday and it was a godsend. But you wont see it here cuz some little pus would wander off and get sucked into a turbine and sue, or a child would run off or someone would sue becuase their hearing was damaged by the sounds on the tarmac. As Americans we have to stand togther and accept that our wussiness and love of lawsuits comes at a price.God Bless America*
*Now with safety restraints!
JetBlue in uses two sets of stairs in Long Beach. The weather there makes that more feasible though.
Peter's an idiot.
May I ask what merited such hostility?
JetBlue in uses two sets of stairs in Long Beach. The weather there makes that more feasible though.
West Palm Beach too.
Haven't laughed this much from comments in a while.
For all the humor, the sad fact is that the poster who said attributed the root of the problem to human ignorance was dead on.
Janelle: just wait at the carousel? are you kidding? trust me, i dont need to pack much when im flying away for a weekend- so i will most definitely bring my carry-on instead of checking in a bag. with a 98% increase in lost luggage, do you think im going to check mine just so you can get to your seat faster? riiiight.
i follow the "rules" too. two pieces of carry-on luggage. read em and weep
How about Continental's inane policy of allowing OnePass Elite members to board first, or whenever they want? This completely messes with the zone boarding system...particularly when they can skip ahead of everyone and make traffic halt because their seat is in Row 10 while Rows 20-30 are boarding. And even if they do get on first, they're usually in aisle seats, which means they have to exit their row to let the peasant boarders into the row, again halting traffic.
Continental SUCKS.